


Through the Straits

by Minxchester



Category: Death Stranding (Video Games)
Genre: Aphenphosmphobia, Beach Jumping, Beaches, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Emotions, F/M, Multi, Mutual Pining, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-18
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2021-02-12 21:07:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21482857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Minxchester/pseuds/Minxchester
Summary: "The look on her face is the heartbreak that he feels."
Relationships: Amelie/Sam Porter Bridges, Sam Porter Bridges & Amelie, Sam Porter Bridges/Fragile
Comments: 29
Kudos: 71





	Through the Straits

The look on her face is the heartbreak that he feels. The others look sad, too, certainly, and none of them appear to see her grief as different from their own; but Sam knows. He knows because it’s like looking in a mirror, and the faint glimmer of tears that she’s hiding echoes the bone-deep ache in his chest.

He doesn’t want to _ have _ to be the one who goes. She doesn’t want him to go at all.

Deadman lifts the umbrella above them; behind Sam, Lockne cradles Lou gently, and Heartman watches with his normal intensity dampened by the sense of loss hanging over all five of them. Sam wonders if Lou can feel how sorrowful the room is. He wonders if Lou will remember him, assuming Lou survives long enough to communicate feelings like that.

Once more, he reaches up and grasps the dreamcatcher, and with a hard yank, the cord snaps for the final time. Sam keeps it raised at eye level, holding Fragile’s gaze. The dreamcatcher is the vessel, but she is his focus. He knows that she can see that, too.

It’s not the first time she touches him, and it’s not the first time for it to be her bare skin over his gloved hand. But it is the first time that Sam not only doesn’t recoil...he doesn’t even flinch. There is no spark of fear, no sting of discomfort from the abrasive, unwelcome contact of another living body. 

Fragile lifts her other arm, holding his gaze as her hand passes over his shoulder, ghosts up the length of his neck, and then her fingers curl with agonizing tenderness around the back of his head, drawing his face down and towards her own. 

Sam’s eyes sink closed, both in preparation and because it’s the only way to breathe through the disorienting experience of not wanting to push away the person touching him.

When their foreheads touch, it occurs to him that this--now the second time that they’ve made direct skin-contact in this manner--is the most intimate that touch has ever felt to him. Which should be fucking hilarious, considering that he had gotten _ married _. He had been a father, or supposed to be one. Lou’s namesake hadn’t exactly been a test-tube baby.

And yet, this is it. Sam’s eyes flutter open for a second, meeting hers with only centimeters between them. They are too close together for the others to see their eyes, and their uplifted arms form walls to shield them. Fragile is looking at him unguardedly; when Sam’s gaze meets hers, there’s the slightest flicker of surprise, and then...the truth.

_ I don’t want her to keep you_.

He feels the words as deeply as if she had whispered them out loud, though of course she never would. Sam forces himself not to draw back or close his eyes, unwilling to shut her out. _ I don’t plan to let her_.

Sam wonders if Amelie had wanted to trigger the Last Stranding when he had told Bridget, and then her, that Lucy was leaving her job and they were getting married. Amelie had never let on that she disliked his wife--and she had been happy about Lou, or at least had said that she was--but perhaps Sam had just constantly disappointed her, choosing other lifelines, trying to choose himself.

Fragile’s fingers squeeze around his hand, and Sam inhales, holding that unspeakable look between them for one more heartbeat before closing his eyes in readiness.

“Okay, concentrate,” Fragile says softly. Sam knows her eyes are still open; she’s watching his face. Either to ensure that this went correctly, or to glean what she could of his emotions as they did this. “Help me look for Amelie.” 

Some people’s voices change when they mention someone or something that they resent. Most people’s tone hardened, a hint of disgust audible in the labeling. Not for Fragile. It was as if, just for those three syllables, her voice goes completely flat and then resumes its normal pitch. 

Sam swallows, trying to clear his mind. Trying to visualize Amelie, and not the woman touching him without fear, right then and there.

Fragile’s breath hitches. “Reach for _ her _, Sam. Feel her,” she whispered, and she raises her head slightly. Their faces are no longer touching. Sam’s eyes blink open, confused by her emphasis--until he realizes that he could feel the same faint pull, the same as he’d felt when Fragile had sent him to Amelie’s Beach before. 

But this time it’s warmer, pulsing with the underlying emotions behind the grief that they’re hiding from their friends, and that meant that it isn’t the right pull. It would be taking him to the wrong Beach.

Fragile doesn’t need a Beach to see him. And if he did this right, if Sam succeeded...then he would come back from Amelie’s Beach. He could come back to Fragile. 

Sam closes his eyes again, trying to do it right. He feels Fragile lean in closer again, her forehead coming back to rest against his own. The warmth is soothing, telling him that she understands. In other circumstances, she wouldn’t be discouraging him. 

How peculiar, to for once be the person who did not want their touch rejected. And to feel subsequent relief that it was not.

“I know you love her.” Fragile’s voice is not flat this time, and she’s doing an admirable job at sounding level, and not hurt by the fact that she is stating. Sam’s brow furrows, his weight swaying forward in wordless comfort even as his mind latches onto the truth of the words. Because it _ is _ true, he can’t pretend otherwise, and it is his guiding line, now. 

Sam visualizes Amelie as she had always been--gentle, smiling, reaching for him unreservedly. Soothing his tears, laughing at his jokes, and telling him stories to banish the nightmares that had never belonged to him.

He feels the tug again, this time once again intertwined with something gritty and otherworldly. A hint of the same cloying, suffocating chaos that he had tasted on the air every time he encountered Higgs. It’s the door to Amelie’s Beach, and Sam forces himself to lock his energy onto it, guiding Fragile’s mind there, as well.

“You _ love _ her.” The grief is there, now, audible--the others have to hear it. Fragile is only human, after all. To see into another’s mind, to see the depth of the imprint left by someone else they love or are loved by, is an impossibly raw thing to look at. And she is seeing it inside of a mind that she loves.

Sam opens his eyes one last time, feeling the warm line of a single tear escape his eye, and slide down his cheek. Fragile’s eyes are closed now, but her cheek glistens with a mirroring tear, and it burns itself onto the back of Sam’s eyelids to haunt him.

_ You love her_.

_ Not like I need you_.

“_There_!”

Sparks explode around him, and Sam sees the lights flare out in the room before he is sucked away from it. His hand is torn from Fragile’s grip as he is yanked through space and dimension towards the Beach.

**Author's Note:**

> I keep re-watching the series of cutscenes toward the end of the game and I have some serious, serious emotions about Sam, Fragile, and Clifford. I may end up writing a lot of drabbles for this game lol.


End file.
